


Sheep Suit

by plant_boi_potter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: 12 Grimmauld Place, Angst, Blood and Injury, Chocolate, Found Family, Full Moon, Gen, Lupin Sweaters, Werewolf Genealogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:14:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23056078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plant_boi_potter/pseuds/plant_boi_potter
Summary: A Metamorphagus loses all the changes they make to themselves when they find themselves in severe conditions. Teddy has been fighting the wolf in him for three years, perfecting it like a craft but this time, he's not just fighting the urge to free the wolf from his own body; he's fighting the urge to kill.He can't do this alone.He has to.He can't let this family slip away too.jilylicious made a headcanon and this is the result of thinking about it too deeply!
Relationships: minor Ginny Potter/Harry Potter
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17





	Sheep Suit

Fire. His lungs were on fire and yet he drunk every breath greedily, noisily, as if this was the last taste on Earth. The dizzying pain was so freeing he could almost pretend he could outrun his body - leaving it balled up and listless like a wet bundle of clothes. 

Teddy dodged a puddle, still managing to catch the edge of a trainer. He winced as the water displaced, the night so fragile around him that he'd be a fool to make another mistake like that, in fear of it crashing down around him. That perfect, stoic silence. 

Another puddle rippled beyond a streetlight and Teddy ground to a halt, breathing deeply, harshly with this new, bitter air he'd somehow found.

He was staring at a portrait of debauchery. Tangled blue hair curling around his face like... Harry's.

He shook his head brusquely, catching his bottom lip between his teeth before he set off again. If he wasn't feeling so bitter he would have laughed. He'd been disarmed by a puddle. If he told them when he got back they'd be laughing too. With each other. 

Harry had been like a father to him and even Ginny had made some time, giving him a box in the stands at her away games and letting him prop his freezing feet on her calves as she watched the snapshots from their last play.

He loved them. And that's why they could never find out.

The symptoms had started surfacing when he was about thirteen. It had started with small things; the drastic weight loss, the cold chilling his body until he shook like a leaf, every breath he took ragged until he found something warm to wear. 

That was an easy fix. He'd started wearing his father's sweaters and his poor foster parents had been none-the-wiser. They barely noticed when the balls of his wrists stretched his flesh taut, or when his veins became so pronounced that his forearms turned into rivers.

But they left a cup of warm milk on his nightstand and chocolate under his pillow. Teddy started balling the ends of his newly acquired sweater in his fists.

* * *

Then the cravings started. Red sores formed on the inside of his mouth, the fangs pulling, tearing, retracting. 

Month after month of agonising pain only served to stir the pot. He snapped more easily. An elastic band, stretched over and over. He was almost trapped in the stifling happiness that was the in-between of someone else's marriage. 

But still they persisted. Unrelenting. Ginny left him notes on the fridge and Harry sat and listened to him sip hot chocolate at the kitchen table. He was tiptoeing around their good intentions like a cat tiptoes around a mouse.

Until he wasn't.

The first time he'd left gouges in the door frame he didn't notice for a week. Neither did anyone else. Until Uncle Ron offered to help him with the charm work and advised him to lock his windows. Then he'd stared at them so hard they burned. 

The next time it happened he caught himself, nails so deep in the wood he'd be picking splinters for weeks. This time, it was the floor. It was so tangled in old spell work and terribly drawn runic symbols, that it was as good as dead anyway. This time, Teddy took no chances. He watched astounded as his hands moved on their own, fingernails clawing to get purchase before prising the hunk of wood from the floor and tossing it from the window. 

Teddy moved his bed that night. 

He started running soon after, stealing away in the early hours of the morning when even Harry was still asleep. His feet against the pavement was a symphony. He was, for the first time, connected to something tangible.

Something that wasn't his aching bones or his fuzzy head. So he ran. He ran like his life depended on it, because in a way, it did.

His eyes zoned in on a rat. She was quick, sleek and brown - darting across the road as if it weren't an object of abject terror - hurtling herself to the other side in a matter of seconds. Teddy ran with a purpose, weaving back and forth through the undergrowth, the scent of warm, running blood growing thick in his nostrils. 

The idea of live meat was so enticing that for a long moment, all he could do was hold it. It quivered from head to tail, tiny claws trying to find purchase in his hands. He brought the rat up to eye level, studying the depths of her very soul. 

Her eyes were weaselly, so dark they were almost black. The only obstruction was the thick ring of lashes. Teddy watched her for a minute longer before kneeling down. 

He bit down hard on his tongue as the rodent scampered away into a nearby bush. When he drew back, he tasted the blood. It didn't even matter that it was his own - he was starving, almost driving himself mad and blind with hunger, he cried out. An anguished, pitiful sound.

* * *

Harry found him on the edge of the pavement near the hedge at the back of their house. He shook his head for a moment before lifting Teddy into his arms. The boy looked like a cracked ballerina - porcelain skin broken only by the blue-green sea of veins. They were vines up and down his arms, across the pale strip of a shoulder blade that almost reflected the moon.

The full, white moon. 

Hefting him up the slope to the back gate, Harry wrestled with the latch with thick, clumsy fingers. He exhaled when he heard the lock clicking on the other side, long nimble fingers appearing around the gate to jimmy the stuck latch.

Ginny gasped, her hand flying to her mouth before her whole face had even been revealed. Her freckles glowed like a thousand tiny fireflies as Harry placed Teddy gently on the grass.

"Can you stand?" 

Teddy didn't know who had said it, they were whispering, as if worried they were going to wake the neighbours. Neighbours. Hah. At 12 Grimmauld Place? The house that doesn't exist. Teddy let out a weak chuckle and managed to loll his head forward in an approximation of a nod. 

Taking that as consent to put him down, Harry let Teddy stand on wobbly legs while his wife took the boy by the waist, tiptoeing his feet up the flagstones to the back door. They moved cautiously, eventually setting him down in the living room, his head tipped back against the sofa.

They watched anxiously as Teddy's retracting fangs fought against his resisting gums, recently healed skin splitting at the edges like a flower resisting bloom. The moon overhead almost pulsed with Teddy's pain.

"What-" Ginny was still whispering, whisking a damp cloth from the kitchen as she did so. As she knelt to tend to the sweat breaking out on Teddy's forehead she shot a concerned loo at Harry. He splayed his palms. 

"Werewolf genes." 

"How did you-" Teddy struggled against the couch and Ginny's strong arms. 

"I'm a Quidditch Player Teddy, remember? Now relax."

"Tedward, darling. We've known you for fifteen years. We raised you. Of course we knew. Now please, let us help."

Ginny tipped something cold and murky tasting into his mouth and Teddy tried not to grimace while drinking it. Apparently his valiant effort had not prevailed because Ginny broke out into a smile. She looked like the sun. 

"Thanks Gin." He turned. "Harry." 

"We're not going to abandon you, Teddy." They were so close behind each other they were almost in sync, rushing to get the words out as if they were escaping. Or being set free. 

"As soon as Ron pointed out how scratched up your door was getting, we decided to look into it. St. Mungo's advised us to use a small dose of watered Wolfsbane to ease the symptoms."

"We're so sorry Teddy. Dora had hoped it had skipped you." 

"It?" He was weak, but he no longer felt like he was dying of hunger. As Teddy felt his eyes slip from blue to brown, he closed his lids. "I'm half of him, aren't I?"

"Your father was a wonderful man." Ginny's tone had taken on a hard edge before softening again. "I know you love him. I can't imagine this can be easy."

"No." Teddy whispered. "Partial transition never is. It'd be easier if I was just fully-"

"No, Ted."

"Broken."

Ginny grabbed Harry by his forefingers as she stood and they backed out of the room together, stopping her other hand just shy of Teddy's hair. The vibrant, peacock blue she'd watched him flounce out of the house with was lightening to brown dishwater. 

"I'll wait upstairs." Harry nodded mutely, leaning lightly on the door jamb as Teddy's breathing slowed.

He watched the new freckles rise, so light it was like powdered sugar across his nose. The way his jaw broadened to accommodate a five o' clock shadow Harry was sure Teddy never had. 

And for a minute, time hurtled backwards. James Potter leaned into the nick in the wall by his head and watched as Remus curled up into the sofa, snoring softly, the full moon waning before his very eyes. 

Harry blinked, shaking himself into the present. He blinked slowly before spelling a bar of chocolate from the fridge, the clunk of weight hitting the glass coffee table like a tossed coaster. "Well, goodnight..." He didn't know what else to say as he watched Remus' sweater turn away from him - brown hair fanning around it's collar like a sunken halo.

Teddy would be back tomorrow. He always was.

**Author's Note:**

> Written in honour of it being a full moon in two days I guess.


End file.
